07 June 2012 2:42 PM

You may have missed this week's big political news from the United States where conservative Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, was re-elected by a landslide in the teeth of hysterical and well-funded opposition from public sector unions who had sought his early removal from office through a recall ballot.

How do I know it was a landslide? Well, Walker won by a larger share of the vote than Obama did the White House in 2008 and his victory was proclaimed a landslide. What's good for the goose...

Had Walker lost, the BBC and their liberal allies would have made sure that President Obama's victory (as it would surely have been portayed) led the bulletins. The GOP, we would have been told, was finished - the party's "extremism" and "intolerance" deservedly seeing Governor Walker turfed out of office.

Instead the Tea Party movement, supposedly defunct and out of touch, delivered a kick in the crotch to union bosses who fund the Democratic Party almost as handsomely as their leftist brethren bankroll the Labour Party here in Britain.

Walker's victory was historic.

This is the first time that a gubernatorial recall ballot has failed to remove an incumbent - and it happened in a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

One man, however, was not there to celebrate this glorious victory for common sense and fiscal conservatism in Wisconsin and yet he, above all, deserves great credit for mobilising the silent majority to raise their voices in defence of true American values: Andrew Breitbart, the pre-eminent controversialist and cyber-activist who sadly died earlier this year.

In an effort to protect their own economic and political interests, the unions did their very best to bully the voters of Wisconsin by occupying the State Capitol, brainwashing children and engineering unlawful strikes. Not content with being annihilated at the polls, leftists are now calling for Scott Walker to be assassinated.

Collective bargaining can now come under attack while public sector employees are to be expected to make a fairer contribution towards their own pension and healthcare costs. Teachers in Milwaukee - teachers! - receive an average pay and benefits package of over $100,000. A bus driver in Madison took home $159,000 in 2009. Seven of them were paid over $100,000 - for driving a bus! This is madness. There are more examples of union abuses in Wisconsin here.

These abuses - these sickening displays of contempt to hardworking taxpayers - happen in Britain too: they are just not widely reported. Not yet anyway.

Thanks to Governor Walker's brave leadership, Wisconsin is one of the few US states to be seeing economic and jobs growth and a decline in its deficit. The attempt to make him out to be a fascist demagogue failed spectacularly.

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In a few weeks' time, members of the G20 will gather in Los Cabos to discuss, among other matters, the perilous position of the global economy - especially the ongoing concerns surrounding the Eurozone.

All in good fun obviously but with a serious message at its core - highlighting the fact that the country still owes billions from its massive default in 2001 and with no sign of ever paying it back. This is all the more insulting given that British taxpayers are helping to underwrite World Bank loans to the country.

If Argentina continues to treat Britain and its European allies with such clear disdain, then why on earth is the British taxpayer continuing to funnel cash Argentina's way?

With Hugo Chavez expected shortly to go deeper underground than his country's number one export, Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner is wrestling the ailing Venezuelan leader for the mantle of leader of the socialist world. But her domestic popularity is falling too - a fact that may even result in yet more sabre rattling and asset seizures. This belligerence will only continue, threatening the economic - and foreign policy - interests of Britain and her allies.

It's long overdue that real action is taken against Buenos Aires to demonstrate that reckless behaviour is met with consequences...

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05 June 2012 9:56 PM

What a wonderful long weekend of celebrations! As I tweeted, adapting Cecil Rhodes' remarks over a century ago, this weekend has reminded us that we Britons are truly blessed. Rather than searching behind the back of the sofa for a winning lottery ticket we need look no further than ourselves.

For in being born British we have truly won the lottery of life.

It's hard to know what was the most joyous part of the festivities (over and above the sight of Channel 4 News' Jon Snow and Polly Toynbee's incessant whining being drowned out by millions of monarchists wishing the Queen well). The pageant? The concert? The thanksgiving service and balcony appearance?

Even the cringeworthy coverage presented by the BBC has a silver lining. Sky News was excellent. And if the BBC cannot be relied upon to cover national events properly then surely the time for it to be privatised has arrived at last? Fearne Cotton is no Richard Dimbleby.

The jubilee concert was, I think, a particular triumph and for that, Gary Barlow deserves a knighthood. For while the pageant might have been portrayed as rather a middle class affair, the concert brought together music fans of all backgrounds and ages to honour the Queen.

There were some notable disasters. The drag act impersonating Grace Jones was one. Cliff Richard was less "Living Doll" and more "Living Dead". Cheryl Cole proved once and for all that she cannot sing live: indeed I thought someone had stood on a corgi's tail to make it yelp until I realised that that grim cacophony I was enduring was actually Cheryl singing. The Military Wives sounded like a small village WI choir at their first rehearsal. And will.i.am was aw.ful.

The so-called comedians (with the noble exception of Peter Kay) were utterly unfunny (and their unfunniness was made all the more stark by Prince Charles' delicious putdown in his speech afterwards).

The headline acts - Madness, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones, Lang Lang, Elton John, Robbie Williams, Jessie J and JLS - were, however, outstanding. Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Gary Barlow's Commonwealth tune, Sing, was definitely catchy and the story behind its making was inspirational. But it was the production that will live long in the memory.

The sight of projected images on the front of Buckingham Palace, Madness singing on the roof of the Palace and the stunning fireworks that closed the concert, combined with a crowd of over a quarter of a million people along the Mall, is what truly stirred the heart. Prince Charles' moving tribute to his mother put the seal on a truly unforgettable evening.

Since the end of the imperial age, Britain has struggled to find an identity. National self-deprication has morphed into a self-destructive lack of self-esteem. But this weekend has seen communities of all classes come together to honour an 86 year-old woman few of us have ever seen in person or had the privilege of meeting.

The success of the jubilee (coupled with what should be the success of the Olympics) has been the way in which it - or they - will hopefully mean that we as Britons can now move forward into the millennium with a sense of national pride, purpose and self-confidence.

The person who deserves our thanks for that is, of course, the Queen herself. But the work done by men such as Gary Barlow, in organising the stunning jubilee concert, should not go unrewarded or unrecognised. If only others in his position would give back as much as he has. He too is the very best of British.

The next time he meets the Queen it should be to kneel in front of her and to have her invite him to arise as Sir Gary.

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31 May 2012 5:29 PM

As the coalition begins to wallow in ever greater unpopularity thanks to a botched Budget, a growing perception (spread by the BBC, naturally) of sleaze and incompetence and an avoidable double-dip recession, the attacks on David Cameron and George Osborne become ever more shrill.

Lurking barely beneath the surface is an attack based on their privileged upbringings - as through it is somehow their fault as children to have been sent to the best schools and universities by their parents.

Today, supposedly in an effort to encourage social mobility (but no doubt also to encourage mischief and to score political points), Labour's Alan Milburn has proposed that those from poorer backgrounds should be given plum jobs in the professions over those who went to private schools.

Faced with a brilliant middle-class, public school educated barrister and a less accomplished, state-educated colleague, Mr Milburn believes that we should dumb-down our judiciary and every other aspect of public life and our professions - all so that the less able lawyer does not have his feelings hurt.

Everybody, after all, must win prizes: the Labour cry since comprehensivisation in the 1960s.

In a week that has seen our excellent Education Secretary, Michael Gove, put other witnesses (and indeed Lord Leveson himself) to shame with his eloquence and erudition, Labour is once again setting people against each other. And children will continue to suffer.

Rather than reforming our failing state education system (which was attacked this week for being one of the worst in Europe, where illiteracy and innumeracy are rife), they would far rather engage in the politics of envy. Robespierre would be proud.

Instead of taking on their union paymasters, whose selfish members in the Luddite teaching unions are the very ones to blame for our third-rate state education system, Labour prefers to insult those Tories who have had the misfortune to attend Eton College or St Paul's.

Sack useless teachers? Man the barricades, comrade!

Work a bit harder to help kids learn? Never!

Throughout its history the Labour Party has failed those about whom it professes to care most: the poor.

One of Tony Blair's first - and most venal - acts on entering Downing Street was to end the assisted places scheme that allowed children from humbler backgrounds to benefit, through taxpayer-funded scholarships, from the stellar education offered by Britain's elite schools.

That act alone has deprived thousands of brilliant children from the stellar education that too few enjoy.

Private schools endured attacks from the obssessed left-wing zealot, Dame Suzi Leather, when she "led" the Charity Commission. Thankfully she failed but it was a close-run thing.

When the Conservatives proposed education vouchers in the 1970s and again over the past decade, Labour attacks the policy and the Tories lose their nerve.

When Michael Gove introduced his far-sighted education reforms last year and said this week that such schools could one day be profit-generating businesses, knuckle-dragging Trotskyists in the teaching unions and their parliamentary mouthpieces choked on their corn flakes.

Positive discrimination of any kind is morally reprehensible. It is wrong to give a job to someone who is black or male ahead of someone who is white or female simply because of their colour or gender. It is likewise wrong to discriminate against someone for having gone to a certain school or university - and it is inherently un-British to contemplate doing so.

Rather than denigrating the work done by Britain's elite schools we should be encouraging all schools to learn from their example. Brilliant educationalists such as Wellington College's Anthony Seldon should be the model headteacher whose ethos is copied by heads throughout the country.

Alan Milburn - once seen as a Blairite reformer - has shown his true colours. In calling for these reforms today he has shown himself to be the heir to Prescott rather than an heir to Blair.

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04 May 2012 9:30 AM

As political geeks wake up to see what the voters have decided (albeit not yet in London or Scotland), the message is clear: the coalition is now suffering at the polls.

The Labour Party, their union paymasters and their obedient mouthpieces on the BBC whined about the effect of "Tory cuts" even before any of those cuts had been introduced. The narrative has been written and with barely 15% of the cuts having occurred, the Tories and LibDems are struggling to retain the support of many millions who voted for them in 2010.

Now the battle begins.

Leaving aside the fatuous and offensive smears from the gaffe prone Baroness Warsi who juxtaposed UKIP to the BNP with the mathematical elan of a GCSE dropout (which at least now answers the question as to why she has been so invisible for the past 2 years), what three lessons are there to be drawn at this early stage on the morning after the night before?

First, UKIP cannot and should not be dismissed as a party of fruitcakes and gadflies. UKIP polled strongly in areas where it ran candidates and its continued rise cannot be ignored. UKIP supporters need to be courted, not insulted, if the Tories are to reclaim their votes in time for 2015.

Secondly, the Tories did not lose because we had too few wind farms. Or send too little money to the EU or to developing nations through the foreign aid budget. Conservative councillors did not lose because too many were not female, gay or black enough or because council tax was too low. The response needed from Downing Street is not to ban access to certain internet sites or faster Lords reform. It's the economy, stupid. So accelerate the cuts in spending, debt and taxes or say goodbye to any chance of winning in 2015.

Thirdly, even though the Tories did badly (and the LibDems did worse), turnout was low and Labour failed to break through 40%. Voters are sick of the main three parties' inability to solve the country's problems - weak growth, high unemployment, crime, immigration, schools and hospitals. As George Galloway said, they are three cheeks of the same backside. There was an appetite for radical reform in 2010 that is, perhaps only just, still there. Tinkering on irrelevant issues popular with the chattering classes in Notting Hill or embarking on eye-catching initiatives and stunts is not what is required.

Conservative MPs and their activists are invariably loyal. But that loyalty should never be tested too far.

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02 May 2012 8:37 PM

In one of the lesser reported items last week Saint Vince of Cable announced to Parliament that the government would implement new “restrictions on the export and trade of licensable goods with the Argentine military… with immediate effect.” Hurrah!

So despite the Argentine regime’s bellicose rhetoric and continued designs on British territory, Her Majesty’s Government has only now decided that it might not be a good idea to arm President Kirchner and her belligerents in Buenos Aires.

Unlike other government initiatives, one can only hope that this is properly executed goes into effect quicker than you can say “Belgrano.” But I digress.

The Argentine government’s recent decision to renationalise YPF, has sent a signal that Kirchner’s government is not only perfectly comfortable with threatening a peaceful democracy off its shores, but also sees no problem with taking a page out of the Chavista playbook through arbitrarily seizing privately held Spanish assets.

With rampant inflation and a sluggish economy it’s hardly surprising that Kirchner would take such reckless measures to distract the Argentine people from her own shortcomings.

But despite expressing its clear disregard for the rule of law and open hostility to the concept of free markets, the Argentine government still retains a seat in the G20, which is set to meet in Mexico in June.

Interestingly, the Mexican government has declared that “economic stabilization” and “improving international financial architecture in an interconnected world” would be two of its chairmanship’s priorities.

Because nothing says “economic stabilization” like seizing the assets of a fellow member (the European Union is a member, and Spain has observer status).

If Argentina cannot comply with these principles, member states should therefore undertake measures to advocate for their immediate expulsion from the G20.

Argentina has always taken a cavalier approach to international debt obligations and now it is playing fast and loose with international investors.

Having failed to halt arms shipments to Argentina up until last week, the British government should show some backbone and spearhead these efforts and endeavour to maintain whatever ounce of credibility the G20 still has.

Argentina’s continued membership of the G20 is nothing short of an insult to those nations that respect the property rights and holdings of international investors. Until we see real action to address this to maintain the integrity of the organisation, the G20 will join the dustbin of other bankrupt – and toothless – IGOs.

But what I found most offensive of all is that World War II is to be described as "the European Civil War".

That's right: a European Civil War that saws millions fight and die in theatres around the world in places as diverse as Tobruk, Pearl Harbour and the Burma Railway.

What greater calculated insult can there be to those from India, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and across the world who fought and died to defend freedom from Nazi and Japanese tyranny?

Europhiles love to decry those of us who want Britain to become an independent nation state as "little Englanders" - despite the fact that we want Britain to continue its role as a global trading nation.

In truth the proposal to redesignate World War II as the European Civil War shows Europhiles to be "little Europeans" - insular, arrogant and inward-looking.

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02 April 2012 1:09 PM

I am currently in California with a group of young conservatives introducing them to the legacy of Ronald Reagan, which will include a visit to his former home, Rancho del Cielo, that was preserved for the nation by the Young America's Foundation.

Yesterday I visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. It reminds you quite how inspirational and uplifting Reagan's rhetoric was. His remarks in Grenada, freed from communist leadership, particularly resonated with me when he said:

"In free societies, people do not live in fear. They never worry that criticising the government will lead to a late knock on the door, an arrest by some goon squad. When people are free, their rights to speak and to pray are protected by law. And the goons are not running the jails; they are in the jails."

Throughout his time as President, Ronald Reagan repeatedly reminded his fellow citizens and the wider world that his overriding goal as President was to expand the reach of freedom. His speeches are replete with such phraseology and it is a theme that runs through every policy.

It was thanks to his bold leadership that some 500 million people were finally freed from communism in 1989 as Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a single shot (in Margaret Thatcher's memorable phrase).

If only we had such visionary leadership today. When faced with an economic crisis, Reagan slashed taxes, cut red tape, shrank the state and unleashed entrepreneurs. President Obama, by contrast, has responded to the current economic crisis by hiking taxes, swelling public expenditure, growing the state and squashing the entrepreneurial spirit.

We badly need leaders today with the courage and common sense of Ronald Reagan.

No adviser would have been stupid enough to place before President Reagan a policy as illiberal and authoritarian as that which is now actively being contemplated by David Cameron - the plan to allow the state (without any prior authorisation by a judge) to snoop on Britons' emails, texts and web browsing.

The Tories and the Lib Dems opposed this idea when it was mooted by the last Labour government. If the coalition government revisits and implements it now then its leaders will deserve to be decried as opportunistic charlatans who are devoid of principle.

David Cameron was elected as Tory leader because he presented himself as a liberal conservative. But there is nothing liberal about these shocking plans.

The scope and reach of these surveillance powers would place Britain on a par with China and Iran. These are powers that would have made even the Stasi blush. These measures would fundamentally and irrevocably alter the relationship between the state and its citizens.

Of course we will hear warm assurances that these powers will only be used against terrorist suspects and the rest of us have nothing whatsoever to worry about.

But then these powers will be used to snoop on taxpayers' affairs, just to check that nobody is engaging in tax evasion or tax avoidance. And then it will be used to spy on hate speech or subversion. And then what?

Is this really the kind of country we want to live in? A country where goon squads of bureaucrats arrive after spending weeks invading your privacy to find some pretext to cart you away?

Since the days of Churchill, Conservatives have stood up for the little guy against the might of the socialist behemoth of the state.

If David Cameron really is intent on introducing these outrageous surveillance measures then he will quickly find that there are many in his Party and who have voted Conservative in the past who will no longer support him or his Party.

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28 March 2012 5:10 PM

How times change. Only a few short years ago companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter were heralded as technological vehicles of empowerment that would enable us, the huddled masses, to communicate freely with each other and to stand up to Big Government and Big Business interests.

Such has been the success of these social media companies that they are now behemoths themselves, rampaging out of control and assaulting our privacy as individuals.

Stories of data harvesting, secret embedding of cookies and the selling of information that none of us realised was even being collected are now increasingly commonplace.

Heartwarming stories about Mark Zuckerberg starting up Facebook while he was a student, Twitter's pivotal role in the Arab Spring or Google's cool, relaxed working atmosphere are no longer enough for us to love these companies anymore.

They are rapidly turning into the very bad guys that they were supposed to confront.

In recent weeks Twitter and Google have rightly come under attack for their continued failure to assist the English courts when orders are made to protect complainants' rights to privacy, intellectual property rights, confidential information or to prevent the continued publication of defamatory, harassing or otherwise offensive material.

Yesterday the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, comprised of members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, made its views known. The Committee made it clear that the likes of Google and Twitter should "take practical steps to limit the potential for breaches of court orders through the use of their products" and ominously continued by stating that "if they fail to do so, legislation should be introduced to force them to do so".

The Committee continued by saying: "Google and other search engines should take steps to ensure that their websites are not used as vehicles to breach the law and should actively develop and use such technology. We recommend that if legislation is necessary to require them to do so it should be introduced".

Amen to that.

As a lawyer specialising in dealing with cases of reputation management, cyber bullying and online harassment for businesses, parents, teachers and employees (as well as for celebrities, sportsmen and politicians), I know only too well how slow, costly and tortuous the process can be to make the likes of Google, Facebook or Twitter do what they clearly ought to do.

I obtained the world's first injunction ever to be served via Twitter. I also obtained the world's first injunction against seeders to torrent sites. I am one of a handful of lawyers who works in this specialist field of law and yet I - and my fellow expert barristers and solicitors - repeatedly encounter obstructionist tactics from powerful social media companies.

They could and should readily acquiesce to prevent the rights of those usually cash-strapped or traumatised individuals whose lives are regularly being ruined, often by anonymous trolls and cyber-bullies. Instead they cower in California while benefiting from access to English-based customers and income.

It should not take the police to unmask those who misuse new media tools to destroy the lives of others. The Times recently said that an astonishing 80,000 cases of online harassment had been reported to the police in the last year. Barely a handful led to prosecutions. And how many other cases of internet harassment went unreported? I suspect tens of thousands more.

Internet harassment has resulted in a worrying number of incidents of self-harm and suicide, particularly among children. Whereas bullying in your or my day might have entailed teasing or a punch on the nose, nowadays it is predominantly anonymous cyber-bullying via social media sites or by faceless text messaging. It can be truly devastating.

The civil courts do provide for cost-effective remedies that can be sought, at least until the government's wrongheaded litigation costs reforms come into force in April 2013.

At present victims have access to justice. Lawyers will act for victims on discounted hourly rates or under "no win, no fee" agreements because they know that if they win, they can recover enhanced costs from those who are properly held to be liable for their wrongdoing. Firms like mine gladly share the risks of litigation with their clients.

Given the risks for lawyer and client alike, the excesses embodied by the so-called compensation culture - rightly decried in areas such as clinical negligence or personal injury - simply do not ordinarily arise.

In an utterly misguided piece of reform pushed for by the powerful banking interests that permeate our bloated insurance industry (who pretend that premiums will fall after April 2013 when, of course, they will not), lawyers will no longer be able to recover enhanced costs from their clients' opponents after April 2013.

If you care about access to justice that you yourself might one day need, you should care about this.

Instead lawyers will, for the first time, be taking a slice of any damages or compensation that their clients are awarded - the American system: hardly a road we want to go down in this country.

So not only will most victims no longer have access to justice (because lawyers will only take on the most winnable of cases unless clients are wealthy enough to pay their lawyers' full fees) but those victims who do still have recourse to the courts will see anything they are awarded slashed by their lawyers taking a sizeable chunk of the pie.

It is an outstanding confidence trick that has been pulled by the insurance industry's highly paid lobbyists and it is to Parliament's eternal shame that all parties have been hoodwinked in this way.

The battle, however, continues. These reforms will not come in for another year. And in the meantime the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook - along with those who abuse the privilege and power of the internet - cannot rest easily because victims still have access to justice. But in 12 months time, justice will be denied to them and cyber bullies will be able to destroy victims' lives with impunity.

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23 March 2012 10:38 AM

You can always tell when a government is in trouble and feels the need to seize the news agenda. If softening up the BBC or The Guardian fails then 10 Downing Street will announce an "eye catching initiative".

Tony Blair was the master at this. Who can forget his plan to march yobs to cashpoints to get them to pay on-the-spot fines or his introduction of ASBOs that are worn as a badge of honour by chavs across Britain?

David Cameron has followed suit, today announcing that minimum alcohol pricing will be brought in to curb the damage done to drinkers and wider society by binge drinking.

Not only will this 40p per unit of alcohol limit save drinkers' lives but it will, he believes, mean less money will need to spent on policing and in hospitals because public drunkenness will diminish. I fear he will be disappointed and booze cruises to France will soon be a regular occurrence again.

Multi-buy discount deals will apparently also be banned, although presumably the Prime Minister is aiming at six-packs of Special Brew rather than a case of Chateau Latour to be quaffed in the Oxfordshire countryside with one's chums from school.

This announcement is utterly wrongheaded. I had hoped that the Prime Minister's nannying tendency had gone when his complaints about Terry's Chocolate Oranges being on sale at the checkout counter at WH Smith had been derided a few years ago. It appears not.

Binge drinking is undoubtedly a serious problem. Too many lives are blighted by alcohol abuse. Alcoholics suffer from liver disease and invariably die young while those around them likewise suffer greatly too.

Too many town centres are no-go areas on Friday and Saturday nights thanks to gang of alcohol-fuelled youths swaggering and vomiting their way down the streets. Weekends are the busiest nights of the week for the police and in A&E thanks in large measure to those who have drunk too many large measures.

So why am I so opposed to minimum alcohol pricing if I despair at yobbery? Because I cannot help but feel that this new policy - which I guess should be dubbed "the Bullingdon Tax", if it is aimed at countering young louts going on drunken rampages - is the wrong weapon to be used.

Far better, surely, to make individuals who drink, smoke (or, like me, who eat) too much responsible for their own life choices? That is what liberty demands: personal responsibility.

Why should the rest of us pay for the damage done by alcohol abusers to themselves and to wider society when they should bear the cost themselves? Is it too much to ask that they ought to bear the cost of a visit to A&E and the full cost of the damage they cause by their drunkenness?

Bad drivers pay more each in car insurance. Those who claim more often on contents insurance policies see higher costs in future years. So it should be with those who make poor lifestyle choices where costs are currently borne by the taxpayer - costs that are no longer sustainable as Britain's struggles with a mountain of public debt.

A 40p per unit of alcohol levy is a tax on the poor, most of whom are perfectly capable of drinking responsibly. It would make more sense to police existing laws more effectively rather than to make responsible drinkers suffer just so that Downing Street can shift the news agenda after a disastrous reaction to the heavily leaked budget this week.

A minimum 40p per unit of alcohol will not have any effect on middle class drinkers who enjoy cocktails and a bottle or two of Pouilly Fume with dinner most nights a week. It will not in reality do anything other than catch the eye today, which is what the announcement is really about.

Nearly 100 years on from Prohibition in the United States have our elected leaders really learned nothing?

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DONAL BLANEY

Donal Blaney is the Senior Partner in Griffin Law (www.griffinlaw.co.uk), a niche litigation practice. He made law when he obtained the first injunction to be served using Twitter in 2009, known as a "Blaney's Blarney Order" (after a provocative and opinionated political blog that he wrote of that name until 2010).
He is also the co-founder and Chief Executive of the Young Britons' Foundation (www.ybf.org.uk), a non-partisan, not-for-profit educational, researching and training organisation that identifies, educates, mentors and places conservatives in public life and that exposes bias, waste and extremism in the education system.
Educated at Tonbridge School and Southampton University, Donal is a former National Chairman of Conservative Future and of the National Association of Conservative Graduates, a former local councillor, lectures widely on legal and political issues and regularly appears on Sky News and BBC Radio 5. He is married to a former US Army reserve soldier who served in Iraq and divides his time between Kent and Florida.
Donal has been described by leading political commentator Iain Dale as "the closest thing we have in this country to a Fox News pundit". He takes that as a compliment.